As personal computers (PCs) have improved in processing capability, various application programs have been developed which enable the creation and display of audio/visual presentations. In the mid 1980's, the IBM Corporation marketed a PC application program entitled: "PC Storyboard" which enabled the preparation and display of color presentations on an IBM PC. The PC Storyboard software was comprised of four program segments. A first segment, entitled: "Picture Maker" enabled the creation and modification of pictures in medium resolution graphics. Picture Maker included commands to write text, draw figures, generate charts and to cut and paste images between pictures. A second segment, "Picture Taker", was employed to capture picture images of scenes from other PC application programs "Story Editor" was a third segment which enabled the PC user to organize pictures into presentations (stories). It provided for the selection of a variety of picture-to-picture transition methods that allowed one picture to dissolve into another. Variables such as display times, colors and whether the picture would be developed as a full picture or as a series of partial pictures, were also enabled by this software. Storyboard also included a segment entitled: "Story Tell" which enabled the presentation of stories assembled by the other software segments.
While Storyboard was, for its time, a remarkable product for the PC, it lacked a number of capabilities. It was essentially a visual presentation assembler and presenter; it lacked any significant capability for audio presentation assembly; for synchronization of an audio presentation with the visual presentation; for interspersing during the presentation, commands which enabled logical and data processing interactions between the viewer and the PC; etc. It furthermore required considerable education of the user before acceptable level presentations could be produced.
Recently, the increased use of windows, pull-downs, advanced cursor-selection techniques and other display-oriented, user interface instrumentalities have come into favor. These enable a PC user to directly interface with a PC's software and to control it largely from cursor-controlled screen selections. Substantial capability, color presentation systems with synchronized audio have not, to the Inventors' knowledge been made available for the PC market.
In such systems, it is often desirable to enable a plurality of presentation programs to have access to image and audio libraries and to utilize them as necessary. However, it is also desirable to minimize the amount of duplicated data in storage and to enable revisions of individual libraries without the requirement to find all references thereto and to correct them.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a computer-based audio/visual presentation system with a simple library addressing scheme.
It is another object of this invention to enable library alterations without the need to revise multiple references to the library.
It is still another object of this invention to enable ready searching of a library with a user-friendly interface.